Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Reading this thread, what I find most interesting is how much our different preferences and philosophies of gaming shape our perspectives on Nintendo and the whole gaming industry. Reading each post I get that feeling. I can see where everyone is coming from, even if I don't quite agree.

And that's a great thing, and all I've got to add at this point.

(And I'm typing this on phone.)

The thing about Nintendo is that while it has had its lows, the lows have never been nearly as low as those as have been suffered by other companies in the business- after all, Sony and Microsoft are the last two serious opponents standing out of a field in the home hardware that once included Atari, NEC, Fujitsu, Sega, Philips, SNK, 3DO, Pioneer, Amstrad, Commodore, Capcom, Apple (very briefly), and others. Nintendo tends to play a long game that can't really be analyzed on a quarter-by-quarter basis- they've already more than made up for 2013's losses even before the holiday season has been taken into account.

Another thing is that there's nothing wrong with being the ol' reliable of the gaming industry, and that has worked out very well for Nintendo for the past 30 years. Five of the top ten best selling game franchises are Nintendo properties (the best-selling RPG of all time was the original Pokémon, not bad for a new IP that came out on a system that was considered to be dead).

The next thing is that modern Nintendo console development tends to have a long lead-time, usually about three years from concept to finish, so it's not necessarily an indication that Nintendo is in trouble- any console that has started development now is going to be near-ready when Sony is probably going to be making buzz about the PS5, for example.